PeteHollmer.com

Stan Lee invented the Marvel No-Prize back in 1964, and over time it took many forms, but my favorite, by far, was when it encouraged readers’ imaginations.

As fans, many of us are quick to point out inconsistencies, even in our favorite works. Everyone likes to feel smart, and finding others’ errors is a easy way to do it (I’m no exception). While Marvel was known for great consistency, many readers wasted no time writing in when they spotted an error. And here’s but one place where Stan Lee’s brilliance shown. He awarded the no-prize to readers who not only spotted an error, but then went further to explain why it was not in fact an error, by applying some logic or elaboration beyond what was told in the story. These readers filled in the gaps.

When I catch myself poking holes at some plot, or seeing others do the same, I like to take it a step further and then say, “well, how could this thing still be true?” and imagine a solution, a bridge across the seeming inconsistency.

Here’s an example: I’m a big nerd for the Walking Dead. I’ve watched the series, I’ve read the books. In the pilot episode we see Rick in a coma. Shane goes to visit him. Rick blanks out, and then wakes up to the zombie apocalypse. According to the wiki timeline, Shane visits Rick on day 14, then leaves and blocks the door. Rick doesn’t wake up again until Day 60 and has a drink of water. So, other than the IV attached to his arm, Rick had no fluids for 46 days, or about six weeks. By the rule of threes, he’d have died after three days. “What a gross inconsistency!” my nerd brain yells.

The trick here is to come up with an explanation that fits. It can push, but not break the universe rules that they’ve created, or contradict established physics or common sense. So how about…

• Someone tended Rick despite the National Guard clearing out the hospital, but blocked the door with the gurney the same way Shane had. —Maybe, although the webisodes indicated that those left in the hospital were essentially euthanizing patients. So, if discovered by those folks, it’s more likely that Rick would have been snuffed. That doesn’t really work.
• The IV bag was a very slow drip, and actually lasted 45 days. A day after it ran out, Rick got thirsty and woke up. – That’s…lame. Depending on the drip rate, you might stretch that out to a day, but any longer and he’d dehydrate faster than he’d rehydrate.
• The timeline has much guesswork, and the 46 day stretch was more like seven days. —Maybe. There was a lot that happened in that stretch, but it’s possible that it all happened within a few days, and Rick woke a couple days after that, on the verge of death. Even so, we’re still looking five or so days without water. Rick would have woken parched, but he could be a statistical outlier that gets him another day or two.
• Rick had a genetic mutation that allows him to go much longer than most without water, like a camel! —Eh, this feels out of place, especially since it’s never been mentioned elsewhere in the show. It pushes the show’s “rules” too far.
• The zombie virus allows folks to go longer without water. —Again, if this were a thing, someone would have noticed it after five seasons and two+ years after the apocalypse. Still a stretch too far.
• Combine the factors – The timeline was about seven days, Rick had a slow IV and hoarded water like a camel (maybe his AC was cranked too…), a factor that was subtly amplified by the zombie virus. —It’s still a bit of a stretch, but it could work. The virus explanation is a minefield though; writers have to be careful with something like that, because it opens the doors for future contradictions. It becomes a point they have to remember whenever next talking about the virus. Luckily, they don’t talk about it much, so this might not be a problem.

You get the gist.

I’ve been practicing this a lot doing the prep work for novel #3. I did a lot of world building before and during, and tried to view parts of my manuscript as a nit picky critic. I saw some holes, and tried to explain things as naturally as possible, but I need to be careful with this. Too much exposition and worldbuilding, and I’ll kill the pacing. If I expand on every little point, I might frustrate readers who just want to get on with the story. So I need to weigh each of these explanations and determine how much the story needs to flow and remain consistent without overloading or boring the reader. It’s a balance.

Next time you’re in one of those discussions, give the No-Prize a try. See if you can imagine a way to weave those loose threads into a consistent tapestry.

I’m always looking for console games I can play with my daughters. I had resisted downloading Minecraft because I had heard how addictive it was, and the rumors were true. (I dream about the damn game now.) I started on the Survival mode, working the controls while my five-year-old dictated where we went and what we did. We explored, played with the animals, and built houses and barns. She didn’t like digging—being underground scared her, and she frequently had me “look up at the sky!” so we could see when the sun was about to set and we’d rush back to the nearest house and go to bed. She’s wary of the monsters after we got swarmed one time.

I was intrigued by the complexity and the building. After mining the right components and combining the right elements, we’d craft better tools and build more interesting things. We built a barn for our animals, and she wanted to paint the barn red. According to the wiki, I had to find stained clay and dye it red. The problem was we were in the wrong biome. So we continued to explore and stray off on creative tangents, learning and talking as we played.

I could tell she was having a hard time with the Survival mode, however (where monsters are hostile and resources are difficult to obtain). We died several times, and that bothered her. I am a cautious experimenter, so I didn’t mind, but I wanted it to remain fun, so I suggested we try the Creative mode (where monsters exist, but they don’t attack and we can summon any resource, in any quantity).

She loved it. We made a house out of gold, we experimented with lights and TNT, we covered a lake in ice “just because”, and we could run around at night without fear (although she didn’t want to wander too far from the gold house anyway). She enjoyed changing the pallet to a rainbow string of materials, but cried when the ice block melted inside the house and flooded two floors (I fixed it). I asked her whether she wanted to go back to the old game where we had built several houses and struggled to find even basic building materials. She didn’t. She liked the Creative mode.

I, on the other hand, was bored with it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the time we spend together wandering, creating, and talking. But with every possible item at our disposal, the original challenge—the struggle—was gone. I was a little disappointed.

But then I thought more generally about story, and how the scope of the struggle, the protagonist’s abilities, their needs, and their challenges all have to be appropriately scaled, or the reader will be bored (or incredulous). So I started to think about the game the same way.

With the initial threats no longer a worry, what were the new challenges? I started imagining rollercoasters, explosive mining, a literal rainbow bridge and other clever wonders we could create now that resources weren’t limited and monsters weren’t a threat. Like Maslow’s Hierarchy, we had satisfied our second tier of safety and ascended to the next levels. All we had to do was redefine the scope of the challenge. And I enjoyed the game once again.

I also put a pin in that connection, to remember when I thought about Dante’s story. The scope of his challenges, the limits of his abilities, what he can know and do, all of that must be balanced, or the story won’t work. He must be challenged, and pushed, maybe metaphorically (or literally) tortured, and never “have everything”, or at least, not for long. Against all those things, he can then be clever/connected/lucky enough to meet the challenge in the most interesting way I can imagine.

Maybe he’ll use a rainbow bridge. Or explosive mining.